The call came on a Wednesday. I was at work. It was not something I ever expected. It was my mother. Her voice was heavy, laden with sadness.
"Bobby, you have to come. Gabby's gone."
"What do you mean gone?" I said, thinking she went away for a while, to be away from me, especially after her demeanor the last time we met.
"I mean gone Robert. She's dead. She...." Her voice trailed off.
Her words shot through my heart like a bullet. My knees gave way and I had to sit.
"Dead?" was all I could muster into the phone, Dead?"
"Get over here as soon as you can."
Everything after that was a blur. I do not remember getting to my mother's house.
She explained to me that John had come over to pick up the kids, as it was his weekend with them. After he left, she started making something for lunch and called to Gabby to come downstairs to eat. There was no answer so she called out again and again. Mommy had knee replacement surgery about two years ago and was doing much better than before the surgery, but still did not like going upstairs if she could avoid it. But after about twenty minutes she ventured upstairs. She found her on the bed. Our bed.
She looked asleep, but mommy knew. She had seen this once before.
The paramedics arrived, but this time it was too late.
Gabby chose.
She wanted it all or nothing at all.
The service and burial was a simple affair. Gabby was buried next to grandma in a site that had been reserved for mommy. No parent thinks they will see their child die before them. During the service, I reached for my mother's hand and she withdrew. I thought that strange.
After the funeral, I returned home with my mother. She had acted strange during the mass for Gabby. When I went to hug her, she stepped away.
Once home, and everyone, including Holly and the kids had left, she called me into the study, a room I hardly frequented while growing up since it was just that, a study. There were no televisions or video distractions. It was like a library, with wooden plank flooring and bookshelves lining the walls. There was a large mahogany table to one side in case one wanted to read. At the back of the room was a large bumped out window, which let so much sunlight in during the day that turning on the lights was unnecessary. There was a Victorian style love seat off to the right of the room with two matching chairs opposite it, separated by a coffee table that no one ever used. In the center of the room up on the exposed portico ceiling beams was a large tropical style fan turning slowly.
She did not invite me to sit, rather came up to me to where I was standing right inside the entrance of the room. My mother had been acting strangely towards me ever since I got there and all throughout the funeral. She stood about two feet away. I could see the anguish in her eyes. She had been crying for a few days now and the small arteries in her eyes were swollen and red.
"Bobby, do you have any idea why she would do this? I know you two reconnected after grandma died. I'm just wondering if she gave you any reason, anything she said or did that might help me understand this."
"Mommy, I have no idea, none whatsoever. The last time we talked, she seemed to be in high spirits."
"Really Bobby, in high spirits? So you have no idea, nothing, Bobby, nothing?"
I sorta felt an accusatory tone in my mother and she was beginning to make me uncomfortable.
"No, I can't think of any reason wh..."
It happened so sudden that I thought I had just imagined it. But the second slap across my face was real, more real than the first. She hit me with all the strength her seventy-two-year old hand could muster.
"You know nothing, you son of a bitch? You killed her. You might as well have just shoved those pills down her throat yourself you prick. You're a murderer Bobby and a fucking coward. You're a disgrace..."
"Mommy, what are you talking about. I know you're stressed, but..."
"Stressed? I'm stressed? That's nothing to how she was stressed Bobby, nothing compared to what you did to her."
I started feeling butterflies in my stomach. Something was wrong here, very wrong and I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
"Ma, what on earth has gotten into you? I was able to muster, though my trepidation was growing steadily through my body.
"What am I talking about, you bastard? What am I talking about?"
She hurriedly walked over to the curio by the far wall. It was six feet tall and perhaps four feet wide, with two glass doors that met at the middle. Inside were little statues and figurines on the glass shelves. She opened the doors and reached into it, snaking her hand behind an ornate stone figure and grabbed a box. Upon pulling it out I saw it. It was about the size of a shoebox, but narrower. It was one of those designer boxes one would buy at stores like a Home Goods, Crate & Barrel or a Pier One. It was pink, decorated with flowers throughout. The matching top had a rose on it.
My mother ran back to me and like a crazed person threw the box at me when she was about ten feet away.
"Here, you murderer, this is what I'm talking about!"
As the box sailed towards me, in mid air, the top separated from the box itself and envelopes flew out, landing all over the floor, some near my feet, others just dropping where they fell out off the box. The box landed with a soft thud a few feet to my left. As I looked at the envelopes, I realized they were actually letters, old letters and my entire being went limp. I felt the blood drain from my face. My legs felt as if they would buckle under me and I looked for something to hold on to, but there was nothing. The nearest object was the mahogany table twelve feet away, but I was afraid if I took a step towards it I would stagger and fall. So, I stood where I was, frozen to the floor, looking at the address on the letters;
'Monica Gabriela Maldonado. PO Box 843, NW Blue Ridge Drive, Seattle WA. 98177'
I was dumbfounded, speechless, for these were the letters I had sent Gabby over the years and when I went away to college. They told the entire story of us in excruciating detail, from our first kiss in Cape May to our longing for each other over the years, even as we were married to others. They told of all we've done and all we wanted to do. They were sexually explicit, but also spoke of our love. The last letter I wrote her was five years ago, but in that box, I realized was twelve years of our relationship, our illicit relationship. I immediately wondered how my mother had gotten hold of them since Gabby told me she had hidden them in our secret place, the floorboard by the bathroom. As if reading my mind she answered my question.
"So you're wondering how your little secret got out huh, you fuck?"
Five months after grandma passed away, but a month before Gabby left John and moved back in, the roof got a leak. It was going on for quite some time without anyone realizing it. By the time mommy found out a lot of damage was done. The contractor she hired to fix the leak told her that the water had damaged half the floor in the room upstairs and it needed to be replaced. He found the letters that Gabby thought she had so secretly hidden.
He gave them to her.
"I read all of them Robert! I read them all! How could you? She was only fifteen, FIFTEEN YOU FUCK!! You should be in jail you Fucking bastard! You were supposed to watch over her Bobby, protect her. She wasn't all there. I know the Dr's said she was normal, but I knew better. Your sister was vulnerable and you took advantage of her, you sick fuck!"
My head was spinning, the room was turning. My greatest fear had been realized.
"I held on to them for a year, not saying a word about it. Then a few weeks ago I couldn't take it any more and I confronted her Robert. At first, like you she denied it. She denied it all. Then I showed her the letters and she broke down. She confessed to everything, EVERYTHING! And so you stand here and tell me you have no idea why she killed herself. You seduced her when she was fifteen you sick fuck. She was so vulnerable and you took advantage of her for your twisted desires. She was just an innocent little girl. My god Bobby, she was only fifteen!! You made her fall in love with you, you bastard and in my own house, and then, in my garden a year and a half ago you promised her you two would be together again. You promised her Bobby, you seduced her all over again. Why, why couldn't you just let her be motherfucker?"
Now, I never said my mother was a saint. She used language to get her point across and now the only way she could talk to me was with the anger that seeped inside her, which coursed through her veins.
"Why you fucking bastard?! Why did you have to fuck with my little angel?!
And don't think for one moment that I don't think all this is sick, because I do. Having sex with your own sister is a mortal sin Robert Joel. You're going to burn in hell! Incest is illegal. If it wasn't for the fact that I've already been through hell, I would call the fucking cops on you, you bastard, you fucking sick pervert, fucking your own sister. With all the women and girls in this world, you seduced her. Her! Why fucking her?"
"Mommy, I loved...."
"SHUT UP! You didn't love anybody but yourself. You seduced your sister Robert. YOU FUCKED YOUR OWN SISTER. YOUR FLESH AND BLOOD and all under my roof. You made a fool out of me, out of your grandmother and you fucked up that poor girls life forever!
And then, you went ahead and lied to her again Robert. You promised her you would leave Holly to be with her. You gave her hope. As sick as this situation is, you promised her. You made her think all would be well. Well, let's see now, she already divorced John and what have you done. She knew you weren't gonna go through with it. After a year and a half Bobby, she knew you were a coward. Not that I'm ok with this crap of yours and hers, but you did lead her on, gave her hope and then what, nothing, nada, motherfucker, nada! No tienes los cojenes para ser hombre. She looked up to you Robert. She loved you. All she ever wanted was to be with you as sick as that may be. All these years you were her hero, a fucking sick pervert if you ask me."
I began to regain my composure a bit and decided I should explain, after all, if she read the letters as she said she had, then she must know of our love for each other. She must understand that ours was a true love. The fact that we were brother and sister should not matter, for if it's real true, true love, then it can never be wrong.
"mommy, let me explain."
"SHUT UP! I'm going to explain to you what's going to happen. You're gonna take your sick letters and walk out of my house. You are to never call me, visit me or try to contact me in any way. I have no son, you hear me, you are dead to me. If you ever try to contact me, I will call the cops and I will tell Holly all about your fucking sick relationship with your sister and how you're the one to blame, for her sickness and for her death."
And with that she walked past me, not once glancing at me, not one more word, out the door and out of my life. I stood there, now more frozen than before. I thought about what had just happened. My greatest fear had been realized and yet Holly wouldn't know about it, which was actually my greater fear. My mother had just disowned me, which would have been terrible had I been sixteen, but at thirty-four, it was a consequence of my actions, undesirable, but a consequence nonthe less. I gathered my letters, the only possessions I now had which connected me to her, her whom I betrayed in the greatest way.
My mother did not keep her word. I guess her anger and sense of betrayal were greater than she had led on. She told Holly, which resulted in the divorce I was so afraid to get while Gabby was alive. Ironic isn't it. It took Gabby's death for me to get that divorce which I should have gotten while she was alive, while we still had a chance.
So much lost for nothing.
Holly, as one could imagine, was horrified. Her anger and jealousy about the kitchen-kissing incident with Gabby just magnified the situation. She kept insisting that she knew all along that I had some sort of sick relationship with my sister. This only served to fuel her anger and now hatred for me even more. The fact that I had named one of our daughters Gabriela only served to enrage her more. Now she realized why I was so adamant on naming one of our girls Gabriela. The idea that I should name one of our daughters in honor of the sick, twisted, incestuous relationship I had with my sister, only served to fuel her anger.
As part of the divorce, she demanded full custody of the twins and I, the sick fuck that I was, was to never see my children again. If I tried to contest this she would go public with my affair with Gabby.
I was between a rock and a hard place.
To make matters worse, Holly was so fucking pissed with me, she called my boss and told him. She really wanted to hurt me and she did. I was let go because as Michael Donavon, owner of the financial service company where I worked very clearly, if uncomfortably, explained to me that he could not afford for clients to get wind of the fact that he had someone like me working at the firm.
'Someone like me.' That's what my whole life was reduced to. They knew nothing of the love we had for each other or the fact that it was Gabby who seduced me. I was the bad guy.
It is said that life gives you what you think about. Life cannot distinguish good from bad, it just gives you what you obsess about. That which I feared so much had come to pass. My cowardliness caused me to lose all I cherished, all I ever loved.
I once thought that Gabby was the weak one in our relationship. That because she delved into our relationship completely, with no boundaries, no limits, that because she was so dependent on my love that she was weak. I realize now that that was not weakness; rather it demonstrated a strength that is not normally found in people. She had the fortitude, the courage to give it her all, crazy or not, she surrendered herself completely to the love that we had, irregardless of the consequences. And now seventeen years later, she demonstrated this strength again in following through with her divorce in order to be with me.
It was I who was weak.
There is a saying that a brave man dies but one death, a coward, a thousand. I die a little every day. The loss of my family, my children, my job, my mother, and most of all Gabby has affected me in the worst of ways. Had I been courageous or crazy like her, perhaps my life today would be different, a life of joy, a life of fulfillment. But I was not brave and so I suffer the consequences. I did not dare. I did not have the courage to dare. Only the brave ones dares. Only those who dare can find true, true love!
I did not dare.
The reality of this seeps into me every day, deep into my very soul reminding me constantly how I betrayed her, how I have forsaken our love, how I do not deserve to walk this earth for the insurmountable failure that I am as a man.
Once, so long ago, in what seems like another world, I promised Gabby something.
I promised to be hers for always and always, cross my heart and hope to die. That no matter what happens and it don't matter that she's my sister cause she is my true love and always will be.
That no matter, no matter where she is, I will always be there to take care of her, to watch over her, to love her, because she is and always will be my miracle girl, my miracle Gabby.
Oh, how I have failed her. How I have failed you my love.
Her words haunt me every day,
"Love me Bobby, love me like you once did. Be my protector again Bobby. Be my bodyguard and I promise I will be yours forever."
I've died a thousand deaths since then, Gabby just one.
I once read a book as a young boy, 'Anduvar' in which the main character, Joral, had lost all - his people, his nation, his family. And in his quest to redeem himself he goes on a journey where he is met by many challenges, each one making him grow and become stronger bringing him closer to his goal. In one scene, he is on a mountaintop and the only way down and to victory is to jump off the cliff, the ledge upon where he now stands, and fly like an eagle. There is a wizard who had been guiding him and the wizard gives him a cloak. With this cloak he could fly, he is told. All he has to do is believe and dare. I remember the scene, for it made quite the impression on me as a boy. And now it came to define my life.
The wizard is talking to him:
The Leap
'You, my son, are on the edge of forever. You are standing on the precipice and you have but two choices: to leap or not to leap. Not leaping, well you know the consequences of that; you are familiar with your life up to this point whether it be great or not so great, you are accustomed to it. But ahhhh, to make the leap. To take that one step that will take you over the edge, into the abyss of the unknown, a place
you've never been before. That is the test of greatness: should I hold on to what I know or seek what is on the other side.
'The other side of what?' Asked Joral.
'The other side of forever. For truly, only by taking that one step into the unknown can we ever find ourselves and if we do we can be immortal. Your name will be carried through time so that your children and their children's children and even their children far beyond the generations will know your name.
Very few reach this point in life, where one must decide whether to leap or not to leap. To do so one must have courage my son. For is not a life devoid of courage a slow death, a catastrophe slowly but slowly building until one day you want to end it all, you want to escape your life for the one which you wish you had long ago taken. And you awake on more than one morning and wish that you had taken that leap so, so, long ago.
To stand on the edge of forever comes to very few and when it does it comes only once. Only those who dare, only those with courage take the leap.
I have never known a king who has not dared. I have never seen a tiger who has not dared. To dare is a ferocious, powerful thing. Dare my son, dare.'
"What happened to those that never dared?" Joral asked meekly.
"Well, let me suffice to say that forever belongs to those who dared. There have been many who reached this point and have not taken the leap, but their names and faces I do not remember. They melt into the night like darkness, never to be seen or heard from again.
But ask me about those that have and you shall see my face light like the morning sun as I describe their greatness, their foreverness!
There is only one step to forever my son: and that is to leap!
But for that, one must dare.'
Anduvar
SD Perez
I did not have the courage to dare!
I had the opportunity. I had reached the precipice where as the wizard said, few ever reach and I had not dared. I stayed in my mediocre life, unable to take the leap that would bind me with her forever and live our lives' fulfilled. I missed my chance at foreverness, on our forever love. I failed myself and I had so miserably failed her. Oh Gabby, how I miss you. Oh Gabby, how I failed you.
A year went by and I fell into a spiral of depression. My mother was right. I had killed her. I and I alone had driven her to the madness of her despondency. Financially, I could cope for my boss gave me a generous severance package. But it was not money that I needed. It was her and she was gone forever, never would I be able to touch her, to kiss her, to feel the warmth of her love upon my skin.
Or could I. As the weeks and months passed since her death I began to believe again. The story of Joral renewed my belief. Wasn't it Gabby that said that if it was truly a real true love, then it could never die, for true love never dies. And that means that she is out there somewhere looking for me, searching in eternity for me and our love. Our love that would never die, a love I would not let die. I must make up for my disgrace. I will prove to her that I love her. I will dare. In her death, she gave me strength. In her death I have found courage. I will go to her. I will find her. Soon I will be with her again. She would forgive me just as I would forgive her. I know she would. Nobody understands. They say I am crazy, but I know better. Our love still lives and we will find each other and be together again.
But first I must leave this place I am in. Several times I had been picked up for wandering the streets and calling out her name, once in Manhattan and other times in my hometown of Franklin Lakes. Although there was no law against that, they said I was picked up for vagrancy. I was searching for her. But they did not understand. They said I was insane, that I was unbalanced, that I was just a crazy homeless man and so they put me in the psyche ward of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. Luckily it was a low security facility and on Sunday, August 20th, 2017 I walked out the front door.
I knew what I must do. I had known it for a while now. I must go to where it all began:
Cape May.
It became obvious to me that that is where my Gabby would be waiting for me, waiting to take me with her so we could be together – forever.
My mother never sold the beach house down there and I believe she forgot that I had keys to it. I will go there and find Gabby. I will search for her, call out to her, no matter how long it takes. I was ready now to take the leap. I was ready to dare, for this life I had without her was unbearable.